ODBC from OpenVMS Applications

[Tom W Lynch]

I have many applications (written in Fortran and Assembler) on OpenVMS. I have an interest in accessing databases on external platforms (such as DB2, etc). Is there any mechanism to do this? Is there such a thing as ODBC access to external data?

[Hoff]

Yes. There are ODBC clients and servers available for OpenVMS. Here are some details on this topic from the OpenVMS FAQ at (www.hoffmanlabs.com/vmsfaq :

--

9.9 Can I use ODBC to connect to OpenVMS database files?

Yes, you can use various available third-party packages
that permit remote ODBC clients to access RMS files and
various commercial databases via the network.

For RMS, consider acquiring one of the packages
available from EasySoft, Attunity Connect (formerly
known as ISG Navigator), Oracle (DB Integrator),
SolutionsIQ, OpenLink Software (OpenLink Universal
Data Access), and Synergex.

The unixODBC package available at
http://www.unixodbc.org has variously been found to
operate on OpenVMS, as well.

For specific commercial databases (other than RMS,
of course), contact the database vendor directly for
assistance.

--

A quick look just now also found:
http://www.openaccesssoftware.com/products/openrda/unix_overview.asp

And here's some example stuff on Attunity:
http://www.attunity.com/forums/openvms-integration/openvms-odbc-example-978.html

[Robert Atkinson]

Tom, ConnX (http://www.connx.com/) is another good VMS-orientated product.

Rob.

[Craig A Berry]

Yes, among other types of access. Do you have external systems involving multiple different RDMS vendors, or is DB2 the only one? Do you have enough control over those external systems and adequate budget to acquire and install additional services on those systems (something required by most commercial ODBC solutions for VMS)? I'm not aware of an open source or freeware ODBC driver for DB2, so a commercial solution may be the only viable alternative.

Just a thought, but you could in principle write your top-level code in Java and access the data with JDBC calls, then pass it to your FORTRAN and MACRO code using JNI, but that might be more fun than you want to have.

[Tom W Lynch]

Thank you all for your ideas. I am pursuing some of the commercial driver possibilities.

Tom

[Jan van den Ende]

Tom,

I just noted you are new her, so

WELCOME to the VMS Forum.

You are kindly requested to value the answers you got:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33

That is all reward you can give to the repondents, and it will cost you just a few seconds, and nothing more.

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe